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Knowing your customers is one of the essential factors of conducting a successful business. All business owners who know their clients have a great advantage, since they can use the data for improving their business strategies. If you know the exact needs and desires of your customers, you can adapt your approach, give them exactly what they want or solve their problems. You can establish a more personal relationship with them, and in this way gain their trust and loyalty. Here are different ways of getting to know your customers that you can use.
Avoid Making Assumptions
Don’t make assumptions about your customers’ characteristics and needs based on the previous tactics or experience. You can’t make generalisations based on the information you collected several years back. Always make sure to be up-to-date and conduct new surveys, because your customers have probably changed over a certain period of time. In this way, you can adapt your strategies and avoid losing clients.
Use Social Media
When we consider the estimates that demonstrate that there are 2.34 billion users of social networks in 2016 and that the numbers are expected to reach 2.95 billion users in only 4 years, we cannot neglect the fact that social media have become an integral part of our society. Therefore, you should use this to your advantage; all you have to do is create an account on social media and start interacting with customers. There are numerous tools that will help you analyse your followers, and gain insight into their interests, likings, habits and the products they are buying. You can encourage them to comment on your posts, share their opinions and problems. All of this can help you create more relevant products, services or marketing campaigns.
Host an Event
It is important to establish contact with your customers in order to really get to know them. You can host an event in your company and interact with satisfied or dissatisfied customers, and meet potential clients. In this way you can show them that you care about your business relationship and that you’re willing to hear their criticism. Furthermore, if you host an enjoyable event, it might appeal to the potential customers who will then decide to give you a chance.
Conduct Surveys
This is one of the most practical ways of getting to know your customers, their opinions and needs. You can easily create an online questionnaire and post it on your social media account or your website. You can encourage your clients to give you feedback that you’ll later on use to improve your service. Personal surveys will help you get to know your clients on a deeper level – you can find out about their hobbies, interests, aspirations, etc. It’s important to conduct a thorough analysis of the results so as to really understand the mindset of your clients.
Pose Questions
Sometimes it might be difficult to decide where to start, or which approach to use. You can always start with questions, as the experts from Liquid Creativity branding agency in Melbourne suggest. If you formulate questions, it will be much easier to find proper answers. When it comes to basic demographics of your customers you can ask “what’s their age?” or “are they in a relationship or not?” Afterwards you can move on to more specific ones, such as “what are their values” and “what do they appreciate?” When you define the questions, it will be easier to move on to the next step.
Knowing your customers will help you improve your business tactics and establish long-term relations with them. All successful business owners know that this is an important factor of success, and you should follow their example.
